Saturday, February 9, 2013

Second Guesses

I'm engaged in some ridiculous second guessing these past two days. I decided to commit to a long-term place to live in my new city and start building a space I want to inhabit. However, after being head over heels excited for the past week, a couple of snags have arisen (that are too silly to go into), and this has shaken my resolve. Monkey mind ensues with an endless stream of "maybe's": Maybe I should have just been content with what I have. Maybe I could have found other ways to make myself feel more at home here. Maybe I could have grown more comfortable in my current space if I had just given it a little more time... Maybe...

And I recognize that this is something I need to work through yet again. I am able to make decisions about what I believe is best for me, but sometimes I spend an inordinate amount of time second guessing these decisions, and, then, after all of the fretting, they work themselves out, but not until after I've worked myself into a frenzy. There's nothing life or death in the decision I've made, of course, but I seem to have imparted to it more power than is necessary. I don't want to have to make any more major logistical decisions for a while, but I felt I needed to make one more major logistical decision in order to move myself closer to the stasis I'm seeking... It's a quandary.

And this brings me back to an idea I've been mulling the past couple of days about the role of self-talk--and the fact that very often, the language we use when we are talking to or about ourselves isn't as kind as it would if we were describing a friend. I know for a fact that some of the language I've used in the past 24 hours, to describe my decision has been language I would never think, let alone speak, to a friend. And there are so many great quotes in the loving kindness world about self-love and self-care--ideas about removing barriers for love, practicing cultivating loving kindness for all sentient beings, etc., etc. But the person we walk around with all day long? Us? We tend to not be as thoughtful in our word choice and thought patterns.

I don't know where this leaves us, except with a more intentional practice to be a little gentler with ourselves. I'm going to work on this. In the meantime, however, I'm also going to try to remember that I've spent the past two months looking for exactly what I found, and it's all going to be okay. It always is.